Faulty Takata Air Bag Blamed For 20th Death

BATON ROUGE, LA — A faulty air bag model that set off the largest automotive recalls in U.S. history has been blamed for another death, Honda announced Tuesday. A faulty Takata air bag inflator killed a Louisiana motorist in a crash in Baton Rouge on July 20, Honda said Tuesday. The unidentified victim was the 20th person to be killed by the defective air bags, which can explode with too much force and send shrapnel into car cabins.

Honda and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration inspected the car, a 2004 Honda Civic, on Tuesday and determined the inflator blew apart in the crash and killed the person, Honda spokesman Marcos Frommer said. The victim was not identified.

The defective inflator in the Civic had been taken from another car, and the owners of the Civic had been given several recall notices to replace the inflator starting in June 2014. The repair had not been made, Honda said.

The faulty Takata airbags caused the largest series of automotive recalls in the United States, with 42 million vehicles and as many as 69 million inflators affected. More than 100 million inflators have been recalled worldwide. The recall forced Takata into bankruptcy protection in June 2017.

The Takata airbag inflators use the chemical ammonium nitrate to create a small blast that inflates the airbag in a crash. But the chemical can become defective when exposed to high temperatures, burn too fast and blow apart a metal canister, hurling shrapnel into the car.

The death comes about one month after a report on the Takata recalls shows that automakers have replaced only 43 percent of the faulty parts even though recalls have been under way for more than 15 years.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Photo credit: Koji Sasahara/Associated Press